Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1887-03-03
OUR HOMES AND OURSELVES.
Habits Reduced to Recognizable Natural
Laws-ImportantE Early Training Mechanic

Habits Reduced to Recognizable Natural
Laws-Important Early Training
al Habit Saves Nervous Force.
One Of the most i'm portant articles in
the current number of the Popular
Science Monthly is the one by Professor
William James on the laws of habit. The
force of habit has passed into a byword,
and the instruction between characteristic
trasts, the result of what is called habit,
and those hereditary or due to innate
tendency, is a subject many scientists
have puzzled over, and written about very
profoundly, without leaving us much the
wiser for it all. Therefore, to have this
force called habit reduced to recognizable
laws, the inception and growth of which
can be plainly followed, to something of
q relief after the many futile analyses of
it that one has had to wide through, and
to the proper definition of these laws
Professor James is permitted to devote
twenty of the first pages Of the, Monthly.
Of course when we look at living creatur
es from an outward point of view, one of
the first things that strike us is that they
are bundles of habits. In wild animals
the usual round of daily behavior seem
necessity implanted at birth; in ami
mails domesticated, and especially in man
it seems, to great extent. to be the re-
suit of education. The habits to which
there is an innate tendency are called in
stincts; some Of those due to education
would by most persons be called acts of
reason. It thus appears that habit covers
a very large part of life, and that one en-
gagged in studying the objective man
ifestations of nina is bound at the very
outset to define clearly just what its linn
its are.
A simple habit, like every other nervous
event-the habit of snuffiing, for in
stance, or even of putting ones hands
into ones pockets, or of biting ones
nails-is, mechanically, nothing but re-
fex discharges; and its anatomical sub
stratum must be reflex arc in the ner-
vous system. The more complex habits,
as we shall presently see more fully, are,
from the same neutral point Of view,
nothing but concentrated discharges in
the nerve center, due to the presence
there of systems of reflex arcs, so organ
lied as to wake each other up successive
ly-the impression produced by one mus
cular contraction serving as stimulus to
provoke the next, until final impression
inhibits the process and closes the chain.
The mechanical problem. then, is to ex-
| plain the IOEIudtlOu Uo ItOCO VI q SIu
reflex arc in preplexing nervous system.
Here. as in so many other cases, it is only
the premier pas Q9ei coute. For nervous
system is nothing but system of paths
| which the nerve current follows, between
a sensory terminus q guo and muscular,
| pIandular or other terminus dd Quenl. A
path once traversed by nerve current
. might be expected to follow the law OF
| the most of the paths we know, and 20 be
scooped out and made more permeabIe
than before; and this ought to be repeat
ed with each new passage of the current.
Whatever distractions may have kept it
at first from being path should then,
little by little, and more and more, be
swept out of the way, until at last it
might become a natural drainage channel.
DIR. Carpenters phrase that ''our nervous
system grows to the modes III which it has
been exercised" expresses the philosophy
of habit in nutshell.
We may now trace some of the practi-
cal applications of the principles of hu-
man life. The first result If it is that
habit simpIifies the movements required
to achieve a given result, makes them
more accurate and diminishes fatigue.
Man is born with tendency to do more
things than he has ready made arrange
ments for in his nerve centers. Most Of
the performances of other animals are
automatic. In him most Of them must